In recent years, with rapid development of a size reduction technique for electronic equipment, a variety of types of mobile electronic equipment are becoming widespread. Then, batteries which are power sources of the mobile electronic equipment are also required to be reduced in size, and a non-aqueous electrolytic secondary battery with a high energy density is attracting attention.
A non-aqueous electrolytic secondary battery using metal lithium as a negative electrode active material has a very high energy density, but it deposits a dendroid crystal called “dendrite” on a negative electrode to make a battery life short, and has a safety problem such as a problem of dendrite growing and reaching a positive electrode to cause an internal short circuit. Hence, as a negative electrode active material in place of metal lithium, a carbon material that occludes and desorbs lithium, especially graphite carbon, has come to be used.
Further, an attempt has been made to especially use, as a negative electrode active material that seeks for a still higher energy density, an element to be alloyed with lithium such as silicon or tin, or a material having a large lithium occlusion capacity and a high density such as amorphous chalcogenide. Among them, silicon is capable of occluding lithium up to a ratio of a silicon atom to a lithium atom being 1:4.4, and a capacity of the negative electrode per mass is about ten times as large as that of graphite carbon. However, silicon makes a large change in volume which accompanies insertion and desorption of lithium in a charge and discharge cycle, and hence silicon has a problem with a cycle life, such as pulverization of an active material particle.